Quote 351
So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremist we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail (8-9)7.6K
Other Quotes from the Author & Topic
although indeed 'God is love', yet we have to remember that his love is 'holy love', love which yearns over sinners while at the same time refusing to condone their sin.The Cross of Christ (88)
Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.
Perfect love is a kind of self-dereliction, a wandering out of ourselves; it is a kind of voluntary death wherein the lover dies to himself and all his own interest, not thinking of them nor caring for them anymore, and minding nothing but how he may please and gratify the party whom he loves.
Love is a commanding affection, a uniting grace; it draws all the faculties of the soul to one center. The soul that loves God, when it hath to do with Him, is bound to the beloved object; it can mind nothing else during such impressions. When the affection is set to the worship of God, everything the soul hath will be bestowed upon it.
Love is the commander of the soul, and therefore God knows that if He has our hearts, He has all, for all the rest are at His command; for it is, as it were, the nature of the will, which is the commanding faculty, and its object is the ultimate end which is the commanding object. Love sets the mind on thinking, the tongue on speaking, the hands on working, the feet on going, and every faculty obeys its command.
The heart thus opened to the Lord, when God is come in, will close upon Him. Abide with me; Thou hast entered upon Thy habitation. O let this be Thy dwelling forever. Only this must be further added, that with God it takes in all things of God: His word, His ordinances, His ways, and all His dispensations. With His love, His laws; with His comforts, His counsels; with His counsels, His corrections.Heaven Opened
there is a sinful self-love when either we love that for a self which is not ourself, when we love our flesh and fleshly interest, or when we love ourselves inordinately more than God, and God only for ourselves. And there is a lawful self-love when we love ourselves in the Lord and for the Lord. And the more we thus love ourselves, the more is the Lord loved by us; and the more He is our own, the more love He hath. Now in Christ the Lord is our God. Heaven Opened
Love is to the soul as the weights to the clock, it sets the soul a-going towards God, as the wings by which we fly to heaven.
The person who lives a just and holy life is one who is a sound judge of these things. He is also a person who has ordered his love, so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more), or love two things equally if one of them should be loved either less or more than the other, or love things either more or less if they should be loved equally
All love, in general, has an assimilating efficacy; it casts the mind into the mould of the thing beloved.
It is certainly a mistake to claim that agape-love always refers to self-sacrificial love, or to the nature of God's love. While it may refer to such things, it may also refer to a "warm regard for and interest in another," to affection, high esteem, satisfaction, or pleasure.Pillar Commentary, Ephesians
Love is the law of Christian life. We cannot be Christlike unless we love. But oh! love is tremendously costly sometimes!
Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.
Love should be the silver thread that runs through all your conduct. Kindness, gentleness, long suffering, forbearance, patience, sympathy, a willingness to enter into childish troubles, a readiness to take part in childish joys, - these are the cords by which a child may be led most easily, - these are the clues you must follow if you would find the way to his heart.
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love.
We must love God propter se, for himself, for his own intrinsic excellencies. We must love him for his loveliness.The Ten Commandments, 7
What is love? It is a holy fire kindled in the affections, whereby a Christian is carried out strongly after God as the supreme good.The Ten Commandments, 6
God's love is perceived as amazing only when we realize that the one thing we truly deserve from him is righteous wrath and eternal punishment for our disobedience and disloyalty.Dug Down Deep (46)
God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
I once was lost in darkest night
Yet thought I knew the way.
The sin that promised joy and life
Had led me to the grave.
I had no hope that You would own
A rebel to Your will.
And if You had not loved me first
I would refuse You still.
Song:All I Have Is Christ
Love is not defined by the response of the loved. A person can be genuinely loved and feel hurt or offended or angered or retaliatory or numb without in any way diminishing the beauty and value of the act of love that hurt him. We know this most clearly from the death of Jesus, the greatest act of love ever performed, because the responses to it covered the range from affection (John 19:27) to fury (Matt. 27:41-42).
On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Mere Christianity (Book3:Charity)
So the love of God who is spirit is no fitful, fluctuating thing, as the love of man is, nor is it a mere impotent longing for things that may never be; it is, rather, a spontaneous determination of God's whole being in an attitude of benevolence and benefaction, an attitude freely chosen and firmly fixed. Knowing God (The Love of God, 134)
"Do you feel most loved by God because He makes much of you, or because He frees you to enjoy making much of Him forever?" This is the test of whether our craving for the love of God is a craving for the blood-bought, Spirit wrought capacity to see and glorify God by enjoying Him forever, or whether it is a craving for Him to make us the center and give us thee pleasures of esteeming ourselves. Brothers, We are Not Professionals (16)
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The Four Loves
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